North to the Future

Ben Weissenbach-an L.A. native with little prior wilderness experience-treks through the Alaskan tundra with a series of eccentric environmental scientists, and returns with a new perspective on technology and a revitalized sense of wonder for the natural world.

At the age of twenty, college student Ben Weissenbach went north to Arctic Alaska armed with little more than inspiration from his literary heroes and a growing interest in climate change. What met him there was a world utterly unlike the 21st century Los Angeles he grew up in-a wild land seen by few outside a small contingent of scientists with big personalities.

There's Roman Dial, the larger-than-life ecologist who leads Ben on a six week trek across Alaska's Brooks Range. There's Kenji Yoshikawa, the reindeer-herding permafrost expert who leaves Ben alone for eleven days to care for his off-grid cabin, where temperatures drop to -49 degrees Fahrenheit. And there's Matt Nolan, the independent glaciologist who flies Ben to the largest glaciers in the American Arctic.

As these scientists teach him to read the changing Alaskan landscape, Ben confronts the limits of digital life, and the complexity of the world beyond his screens. He emerges from each wilderness excursion with a new perspective on our modern relationship to technology-and a growing wonder for our natural world.

"Weissenbach spins the immersive travel writing into a soulful meditation on the value of getting back to nature, whether to better understand the changes it's undergoing or to better understand oneself. This will transport readers."
--Publishers Weekly
"Enduring grizzly bears and packs of wolves, smoke-choked skies, and days of solitude in frigid endless nights, Weissenbach is pulled out of the two-dimensional world mediated by phone and computer screens into the awesome, terrifying, and beautiful existence changing rapidly and inexorably before his eyes. John McPhee has a worthy successor."--Kirkus Reviews
"A highly entertaining and insightful debut."--Cal Newport, New York Times bestselling author of Slow Productivity and Digital Minimalism
"A rollicking adventure through the Alaskan wilds where the art of humility meets the necessity of paying attention." --Caroline Van Hemert, award-winning author of The Sun is a Compass
"Far and away the best outdoor adventure book I've read in years. It takes a dire but somewhat distant topic, climate change, and brings it to within inches of your face, so you can hear the snuffle of grizzlies and the glassy crackling as the glaciers recede. In the process, it gently nudges us to relearn the raw art of being human: to walk softly, to see sharply, to be--vitally--present."
--Robert Moor, New York Times best-selling author of On Trails: An Exploration
"North to the Future is a kind of bildungsroman of perception -- a story of learning to see and hear and feel by venturing out in the wild. It is a beautiful and necessary book."
--Elizabeth Kolbert, New York Times bestselling author of The Sixth Extinction

"Ben Weissenbach's absorbing North to the Future is packed with fascinating and eccentric adventurer/scientists, hair-raising wildlife encounters and haunting landscapes--all in the tradition of his teacher, John McPhee. But Weissenbach offers a contrasting dimension unique to a writer of his era: how all this reality feels to a 20-something raised on the airless virtual world of the 4"x2" screen. The book thus carries a double warning: of a threatened external environment and an internal one, too."

--John Colapinto, New York Times bestselling author of This is the Voice

Ben Weissenbach is a graduate of Princeton University, where he studied English and Environmental Studies and was mentored by John McPhee. After graduating in 2020, he received a Luce Scholarship to report on climate change in Asia. His work has appeared in the L.A. Times Sunday Edition, National Geographic, The Washington Post, Scientific American, and Smithsonian. He lives in Los Angeles.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.